The Canto is exactly the kind of weapon Arc Raiders players have been asking for: a rare-quality SMG that punches close to the Bobcat without demanding the same investment. At 368 DPS compared to the Bobcat's 400, the gap is small enough that most players won't feel it in a firefight. The catch? Getting the blueprint is genuinely awkward, and Arc Raiders has a habit of making its best weapons annoying to unlock by design.
What the Canto actually is
Added as part of the Flashpoint update, the Canto sits at rare quality and fills a specific role: a close-range SMG that's cheaper to craft and easier to replace than the Bobcat. The trade-off is a small magazine and strong recoil, both of which you can partially address through upgrades and magazine attachments. The in-game data puts its DPS at 368, which is close enough to the Bobcat's 400 that the Canto becomes a genuinely viable alternative for players who don't want to risk losing an expensive loadout on a rough raid.
Here's the thing: the Canto isn't just a weaker Bobcat. It's a smarter one for players who die a lot, or who are still building up their resources. Losing a Canto hurts less.
Why the Hurricane condition is the obstacle
The Canto blueprint drops exclusively from First Wave Raider Caches during the Hurricane map condition. These caches, sometimes called hurricane caches, look identical to the standard Raider Caches scattered across normal raids. They're small tins buried in the ground that emit a beep as you get close. The problem is that Hurricane's strong winds make that beep much harder to hear, and the map condition constantly drains your shield, making it smarter to leave it off entirely.
That last part matters more than it sounds. Running without a shield during Hurricane means you're absorbing every stray shot directly, which turns an already chaotic map condition into something that punishes passive play hard.
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Use an interactive map to track First Wave Cache spawn locations before your raid. They tend to cluster on the outskirts of the map, so planning a route around the edges of the zone saves time.
The blueprint isn't a guaranteed drop either. Because the cache loot pool includes multiple blueprints, you could open several hurricane caches without seeing the Canto. That randomness is what makes it, counterintuitively, harder to obtain than the legendary Dolabra blueprint, which drops from Assessors during the Close Scrutiny condition with more predictable consistency.
First Wave Cache in the field
Crafting requirements once you have it
Once the blueprint is in your hands, crafting the Canto requires the following:
- Gunsmith level 3
- 2x Advanced Mechanical Components
- 5x Magnets
- 3x Medium Gun Parts
None of those materials are particularly scarce at the point where you're running Hurricane raids, which is part of what makes the Canto appealing. The blueprint is the hard part. The craft itself is straightforward.
What most players miss is that upgrading the Canto with magazine attachments significantly improves its usability. The base magazine is small enough to be a real liability in extended fights, so treating the initial craft as a starting point rather than a finished product is the right approach.
The broader blueprint grind in Flashpoint
The Canto is one of two weapons added to Arc Raiders in the Flashpoint update, alongside the legendary Dolabra shotgun. The fact that the rare-quality Canto is harder to blueprint than the legendary Dolabra tells you something about how Embark has structured the grind: map conditions are the real gating mechanism, not rarity tiers.
Embark has already acknowledged that blueprint drop rates from First Wave Caches were running hot after Flashpoint launched, and adjusted them downward. That change makes the Canto hunt a bit longer now than it was in the update's first days, so patience is part of the process.
For players working through the full weapon roster, browse more guides covering Arc Raiders' crafting systems, map conditions, and the broader Flashpoint content drop. Make sure to check out more:
